The Constitution & Ten Commandments

I was born in Connellsville General Hospital and graduated from Connellsville Senior High. As an American and former U.S. Army soldier, I enjoy the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Those freedoms would not be possible without the Ten Commandments.

We trace the Western legal tradition (from which the Constitution came out of) to the founding of the Judeo-Christian ethic. Through the millennia, this gave birth gradually to concepts such as equal justice under law, limited government, and a system of checks and balances, because the Founders understood the nature of man. Fallible man must not be given absolute power, because absolute power corrupts absolutely. Put another way, it allows man's true nature to come out.

Other than the fact that the Ten Commandments were given by God, and are therefore important in the sense that all scripture is given by God and inspired, the Ten Commandments do not bear special religious significance to me as a Christian outside of their symbolic significance as symbols of the foundation of our country.

Thus, the Ten Commandments have both religious and secular significance. They are significant as one very important root of our government. If our young people do not understand where we have come from as a nation, they will not be able to understand where we are going.

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